Whateverland – Review

With everything that’s going on in the world, I wonder how many of us would react if we were suddenly transported to a Wonderland-like realm, doomed by our own personal hubris to never see the Earth again. When Vincent tries to rob Beatrice, who is both a goddess and a witch, she responds with her own brand of vengeance. But does Vincent feel more confined by the game than the player does?

What initially drew me to Whateverland was its intriguing overarching plot. To rescue Beatrice and get out of Whateverland, Vincent and the Shakespearean-sounding writer Nick try to collect the seven components of a spell. It’s up to you whether Vincent stays on his path as a cat burglar and criminal in pursuit of his own ends, or whether you and Nick spend your time helping the other residents of Whateverland so that they’ll willingly give you the pieces of the spell.

The game’s story starts to fall apart rather spectacularly, however, once it gets down to the nitty-gritty details. While the backstories of the people who have used the spell pieces are intriguing, we don’t get to learn much about them because the film moves quickly. One character, in particular, commits horrendous acts while on Earth and then, before you have time to process the sudden shift in tone, you’re told, “Well, he’s okay now that he understands what happened.” Without giving away any spoilers, I will say that I was left completely speechless and that the abrupt shift in tone nearly fractured my skull.

Like their stories, the characters are incredibly one-dimensional, but they are all enjoyable nonetheless. Nick and Vincent’s banter is some of the funniest in the film, and there are other instances of witty dialogue throughout Whateverland. Harold, the story’s primary antagonist, also benefits from some offbeat one-liners, which are largely attributed to his erratic mental state. The most fleshed-out characters are Vincent and Nick themselves; Vincent’s wit and sarcasm shine through in any scenario. Nick, on the other hand, is spot-on as a struggling writer who is full of himself but is aware that he thinks highly of himself. The fact that their relationship has a subtle but hilarious gay undercurrent is adorable as well.

The puzzles in Whateverland are pretty much what you’d expect: completely absurd. Most of them don’t have clear instructions, making them frustrating or impossible to solve, like the book-editing one; and even the ones that do have instructions aren’t always organised in a logical fashion. Bell and Bones, a minigame, is the worst offender here; it claims to be entertaining and strategic, but I almost threw my laptop out the window because of my frustration with it before I discovered that you can skip it by collecting yarn balls. Considering it’s intended to be a child’s board game, like a simplified version of Chess crossed with Basketball, it’s deceptively complex. It fails on multiple fronts due to poor planning and execution.

In this point-and-click adventure, you won’t be able to use items in your inventory to change the world around you, and once you open a menu by clicking on something, you’ll need to use the back button to close it instead of simply clicking away from it. While these may seem like minor annoyances at first, they can quickly add up if you’ve tried to give items from your inventory to multiple people or gotten stuck in a menu multiple times. If they came up with a better or at least different system for solving inventory puzzles, the game’s absence of them would be less of a chore.

Some puzzles and dialogue may not activate as intended, voiceover may be missing for some lines, and icons may not update or count as intended; these are just a few examples of the many bugs plaguing Whateverland. It was disorganised and lacked polish on multiple fronts, which made the game’s other issues that much more frustrating.

The art and sound design are the game’s lone saving grace, but even they have their flaws. It’s a bright, cartoony world with a veil of darkness over it, and the art is interesting and vaguely gothic in places, with all the characters wearing heavy eyeliner and sporting strange face designs. Everything in Whateverland is a little off—there aren’t any perfectly aligned windows, the walls aren’t perfectly straight, and random objects are strewn about at random—but this imperfection is what gives the place its unique artistic flavour and emphasises the fact that it’s a haven for outcasts.

Even the music has an unsettling effect, with its penchant for jazz and its use of unusual and eclectic instruments to create eerie melodies. The voice acting is hit or miss, unfortunately. Several of the actors don’t seem to be native English speakers, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t clear that more time and effort was put into getting the words right than into delivering the lines convincingly. I also had to keep adjusting the volume because the volume for the voiceover lines varied seemingly at random. Nick and Vincent’s voices in particular, with their ability to make sly comments and petty aside jabs at each other, grew on me as the game progressed.

All things considered, Whateverland is a sad tangle. Good ideas and engaging protagonists should have made this a smashing success, but the game’s sloppy puzzle design and two-dimensional personalities ultimately doomed it. The game might be saved with patches, but it would take a lot of work.